


Deduction

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drama, Episode Related, Ficlet, Gen, Introspection, Life-Saving, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 17:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles hasn't figured out why Derek tried to save him from the Kanima. He hasn't, but he will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deduction

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/post/44062508692/can-we-please-take-a-moment-to-appreciate-stiles) GIF.

* * *

 

Later, Stiles thinks back on it, on that moment of  _I-didn't-expect-that_ , that moment of realization, the sudden and complete knowledge that Derek wanted to save his life.

The knowledge that Derek cared whether Stiles lived or died.

Stiles plays around with that epiphany in his head, sometimes, when Chem's getting particularly boring or when Harris is being an ass (which is always). It's like a Rubik's Cube, too many sides to it, too many colors -  most of them dark, few of them bright - too many things that could've gone wrong or right, too many reasons for and against.

He can't figure it out. And Stiles is used to figuring things out. Pretty quickly, usually.

So he takes to cornering Derek, sometimes, and talking to him - well,  _at_  him - in hopes of getting an answer, but Derek just grunts like the neanderthal he is and sticks to his strong-and-silent routine.

Stiles wants to ask him,  _Why did you try to save me? Why did you protect my body with your own?_  But he doesn't, because Derek is clearly uncomfortable with it, and technically, Stiles doesn't owe him any longer, not after holding him up in a goddamn pool for two hours.

It shouldn't matter, anymore.

Except for how it totally does.

Stiles's dad would've pushed him away from danger, but then, he's Stiles's dad. Scott would've done the same - but he's  _Scott_ , practically Stiles's brother.

Why did Derek push him away?

Derek doesn't seem like an altruist - he fucks shit up more than he fixes it, at any rate - but Derek put himself in a poisonous lizard-monster's path in order to save Stiles, and that's just -

That's -

What  _is_  that?

Stiles refuses to let it go. He can't let it go. Letting it go would be unlike him, and weirdly... dishonorable, somehow, as if trying to understand Derek is something he has to do, something he's obliged to do, now that he knows Derek has this side to him, this aspect of his personality that apparently demands he rescue Stiles Stilinski from danger.

"So, you play He-Man for everyone else, too?" Stiles asks Derek, one afternoon, out of the blue - startling himself with the question as much as he does Derek, because Derek just... pauses, all over, before answering:

"No."

"Oh." Right. "And what does that mean?"

"It means whatever the hell you want it to mean. Now shut up and drive faster, or we won't get there in time to stop the witch."

Stiles shuts up and drives faster. It's kind of what he does, around Derek, especially when Derek's in his Jeep. Which he is an awful lot of the time, these days. Almost perpetually. The Jeep is tarting to smell of leather jacket and blood.

It's upsetting, having his Jeep regularly hijacked by bleeding werewolves that threaten to ruin her beautiful upholstery. It's also another piece of the puzzle that Stiles puts away, another constant in an equation otherwise riddled with variables.

"I'm gonna figure you out, one day," he mutters, just as they pull up to the witch's house.

"Great," Derek drawls. "Let me know when you do."

And the thing is, he doesn't sound sarcastic about it.

Huh.

* * *

**fin.**

 


End file.
